October 30, 2001 - 8:15 p.m.
Ah, Halloween.
I've been good this year. The huge bag of candy stored atop the fridge has hardly been touched. I pilfered one hershey bar from it over the weekend in a moment of weakness, but otherwise I've been able to leave it alone.
New neighborhood - no idea how many kids to expect. Our old subdivision was full of children, but not many came out door-to-door. Parents would take the cute, tiny ones out before dark, then the older ones after dinner. Later we'd get the teenagers out trawling for leftover candy. The huge clouds of sugar-wired children roaming the streets that I remember from my own childhood don't seem to exist anymore.
I used to start planning Halloween around mid-July when I was a kid. I changed my mind at least a dozen times before settling on a costume idea, then began the long process of putting it together. My parents were never crazy about the idea of spending a lot of money on a Halloween costume, so I would dig through the closets and put together one on my own. I think the biggest expense was the year I wanted to be Robin Hood and not only begged my parents for a plastic sword from Sear's costume department but also had to reimburse a friend's mother for the completely unusable fabric she bought me to make a cloak and hat. Slight miscommunication - I only specified the fabric be green. She picked up about 4 yards of lime green acetate.
Mike's taking Zack out tomorrow. He missed it last year because of a traffic jam getting home. Zack's going as one of his favorite storybook characters - Eeyore. :)
